J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan and My Personal Character Traits

My favorite fictional character is so easily mustered that there is no racking of my brain to search for a favorite. My favorite character has been my favorite since I was a kid. It’s Peter Pan.

Yes, my favorite fictional character is the boy who doesn’t grow up and wears tights. Ever since I first saw Disney’s Peter Pan, which happens to be my favorite movie of all time, I have been hooked and almost obsessed with the character. The movie and book are an almost “Guide to Living” for me, besides the obvious of course. If one has ever read J.M Barrie’s book, he or she would know that Peter did not have any adult teeth. All of his teeth are his baby teeth. Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret about the writer of this here article: I have a lot of my baby teeth left as well. Yes, I am twenty-three years old, but still have my baby teeth.

There is not just one similarity between the character and myself. Certain personality characteristics that I possess match the fictional characters. For instance, I have never been able to color pictures properly. I always color unevenly and even sometimes go out of the lines. Try as I might, my coloring abilities are below average and my picture is always less attractive than somebody else’s. The reason as to why I say this is a similarity is because coloring evenly and adequately is apart of the essential motor skills. Most children learn to develop different techniques as they grow older, but Peter Pan is at a halt in development, being that he will remain only eleven years old and will never reach any more levels of physical and mental development. It is almost like I too am at a congestion of development in that field of skill.

Neither one of us like change in terms of family. Peter has a family you see, for the Lost Boys are his family by default. At the end of the book, the lost boys want to leave with Wendy, but Peter does not want anyone to leave. He wants them all to stay with him forever, even though he never wanted to show how much he cared for their company. The book says, “No so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, neither did he. But of course he cared very much” (Barrie 150). Being the adult that I am, I don’t like my family (brother and sister) having to leave and move on either. I know they have to leave and live lives that meet their great expectations, but their sister grieves a little in the dark.

The story itself is completely fascinating and brilliant if one were to think about it. Incidentally, the actual story written by J.M Barrie is different from the animated movie or the live-action movies. There have been so many different renditions of the story Peter Pan that the original story itself seems to get lost in all the glitz and glamour. Not that the omitting of various facts makes me dislike my favorite movie-not in the slightest. Disney has a way of sugarcoating and adding innocence to the defiled. The story has a darkness to it. Peter is a warrior, a personified child with an insurmountable amount of survival techniques and instincts.

J.M Barrie himself emulates our personalities; or rather, I imitate theirs naturally. Barrie never wanted to get married. He did want children, however, but he never wanted to get married. As if he wanted to remain free, like Peter. Barrie had several different tragedies in his life and he felt detached from his mother at a very young age. Peter Pan did not have a mother, and he felt that she didn’t care for him. See, Barrie’s brother died when he was young, and Barrie’s mother mourned her slain son eternally and almost seemed to have forgotten her other son. Barrie wanted to impress his mother and wanted some form of motherly acknowledgment. Barrie later on met the Davies’ boys and gave birth to Peter Pan.